Commonplacing
Encore Guest Post by Ann Conway Here in central Maine, the world has come down to bone. The songbirds are gone and crows, which poet Mary Oliver terms “the deep muscle of the world,” have taken over my...
View ArticleAvoiding the Mirror
Guest post by Cathy Warner I have circled around this story several times, trying to write my way into it. I begin with an inciting event: An eighty-nine year-old man lies unconscious, unresponsive in...
View ArticleCommodifying Myself
Guest Post by Ryan Pemberton “It’s a funny feeling,” I confessed to an editor-friend as we worked on my first memoir, a book on calling. “In a few months perfect strangers will be able to read some of...
View ArticleThe Neglected Garden, Part I
When my father built the house where I was born, the land was flat and there was little vegetation on it. It had once been the Curran family’s cotton plantation, my mother later told me—sold and...
View ArticleMargo Jefferson’s Negroland
In her photo on the jacket flap of Negroland: A Memoir, Margo Jefferson looks to me like an attractive white woman in her late sixties. In the chapter where she delineates beauty standards for African...
View ArticleThe Eye Behind the Camera: Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson
When we first see the close-up of the dead bird on the ground, we wonder why. It’s only a few scenes later that we return to the site of the bird to see two young children, twin brother and sister,...
View ArticleInventing the Kingdom, Part 1
This post appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue 92. When The Kingdom landed on my desk with a thud, I could tell that it would pose a challenge—that it would be a book I had to contend...
View ArticleThe Cost of Writing the Truth
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that...
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